Light sources are used in medical procedures for a variety of purposes including illuminating dark or poorly lit regions, heating, burning, ablating and/or destroying tissue, organs, vessels or other body structures, curing materials, such as glues or epoxies, and a variety of other uses. Different frequencies, bandwidths or colors of light are oftentimes used for different medical applications. For example, white light may be used for general screening of a patient and blue or ultra violet light may be used to cure certain glues or epoxies.
A light pipe can transmit output energy of the light source into highly uniform illumination. Sufficient energy is needed for a desired illumination however, sometimes the intensity of the energy can destroy the optical properties of the light pipe. This can happen, for example, by excess heat melting the interface between the light pipe and the light source, especially when the light pipe is a plastic optical fiber.